I don't believe Global can buy IBM's chip entity. If it ever happends, It should be the other way around. Just like Chartered folded under Global. Abu Dhabi can buy IBM's chip entity and Global can be folded under. That makes sense from technology R&D & management skills perspective. It's too much for Global to manage IBM's chip unit. GF lacks management skills and experience to manage such a heavy unit.
By the way IBM chip unit was rumored to be on sales sometime ago and I believe that TSMC and Samsung looked at it. The price tag was rumored to double digit $B then.

As Peter pointed out here, I, too, always wondered about what's in it for IBM in paying for research into manufacturing processes, extreme ultraviolet lithography, and 450-mm diameter wafers... i don't think we've ever gotten straight answers from IBM on that either...

Yes, IBM is a "secure foundry" and as such are permitted to manufacture ICs for classified military use. This is a small niche business, not sure if they would spin off or kill this activity if they merged with GF.

"Two other sticking points might be U.S. national security and national pride."
The first half of that is probably a point worthy of more attention than given here. I'm I mistaken that IBM fabs a lot of chips destined for military equipment?

I am really happy to read this very detailed article. We did some analysis in our recent post that detects GF getting really close to #2 (UMC)
click here to see the graph:
http://anysilicon.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/New-Microsoft-PowerPoint-Presentation1.jpg

I think the foundry business needs a lot of capitol to survive. If you can't survive, any desire to put "america first" or "new york first" is irrelevant. A company I worked for made explicit efforts to put "eurozone first" and went out of business. I would have preferred they made survival priority #1, #2 and #3.